"This is the way I reasoned: Destined to live among men, formed to
please them, and to share in their happiness, we are obliged to suffer
from their caprices, and above all fear their malignity. It seems that
they have no other object in our education than that of fitting us for
love, indeed, it is the only passion permitted us, and by a strange
and cruel contrariety, they have left us only one glory to obtain,
which is that of gaining a victory over the very inclination imposed
upon us. I therefore endeavored to ascertain the best means of
reconciling in use and custom, two such glaring extremes, and I found
predicaments on all sides.

"We are, I said to myself, simple enough when we enter society, to
imagine that the greatest happiness of a woman should be to love and
be loved. We then are under the impression that love is based on
esteem, upheld by the knowledge of amiable qualities, purified by
delicacy of sentiment, divested of all the insipidities which
disfigure it, in a word, fostered by confidence and the effusions of
the heart. But unfortunately, a sentiment so flattering for a woman
without experience, is everything less than that in practice. She is
always disabused when too late.

"I was so good in the beginning as to be scandalized at two
imperfections I perceived in men, their inconstancy and their
untruthfulness. The reflections I made on the first of these defects,
led me to the opinion that they were more unfortunate than guilty.
From the manner in which the human heart is constituted, is it
possible for it to be occupied with only one object? No, but does the
treachery of men deserve the same indulgence? Most men attack a
woman's virtue in cold blood, in the design to use her for their